China’s COVID-19 cases have become “impossible” to track, the country’s top health body said yesterday, with officials warning that cases are rising rapidly in Beijing after the Chinese government abruptly abandoned its “zero COVID-19” policy.
Beijing’s move to scrap mass testing and quarantines after nearly three years of attempting to stamp out the virus has led to a drop in officially reported infections, which last month hit an all-time high.
However, those numbers no longer reflect reality because testing is no longer required for much of the country, the Chinese National Health Commission said in a statement.
Photo: Bloomberg
“Many asymptomatic people are no longer participating in nucleic acid testing, so it is impossible to accurately grasp the actual number of asymptomatic infected people,” the commission said.
The statement came after Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan (孫春蘭) said new infections in the capital were “rapidly growing.”
Chinese leaders are determined to press ahead even though the country is facing a surge in cases that experts fear it is ill-equipped to manage. Millions of vulnerable older people are still not fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and underfunded hospitals lack the resources to deal with an influx of infected patients.
Photo: REUTERS
Authorities said they would begin allowing vulnerable people, including those aged 60 or older, to receive a second COVID-19 vaccine booster six months after their first.
A line of about 50 people stretched out the door of a fever clinic in Beijing yesterday, with multiple residents saying they were infected with COVID-19.
“Basically, if we are lining up here, we are all infected. We would not come here if we weren’t,” one person waiting in line said. “I’m here with a senior member of my family, he’s had a fever for nearly 10 days in a row now, so we are coming to do a checkup on him.”
Restaurants, shops and parks are allowed to reopen, but residents are not finding the path to living with the virus straightforward.
Many symptomatic cases have opted to self-medicate at home, while others are staying in to protect themselves from getting infected.
Businesses are also struggling as COVID-19 rips through the population and hits their staffing. As a result, the capital’s streets are largely empty.
“Basically I follow the requirements of the Beijing government, that the elderly should stay home and go out as little as possible,” said one resident in his 80s who declined to give his name.
He said he was not too worried because he thought that the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 was mild, but added that “there shouldn’t be complete relaxation and freedom.”
“If we are dead, how can we be free, right?” he said.
People have complained of sold-out cold medicines and long lines at pharmacies, while Baidu Inc (百度) said that Internet searches for fever-reducing ibuprofen had risen 430 percent over the past week.
Soaring demand for at-home COVID-19 tests and medications has created a black market with astronomical prices, while buyers resort to sourcing the goods from “dealers” whose contacts are being passed around WeChat groups.
Authorities are cracking down, with market regulators hitting one business in Beijing with a 300,000 yuan (US$43,166) fine for selling overpriced test kits, the Beijing News reported on Tuesday.
In a sea change for a country where COVID-19 infection was once taboo and recovered patients faced discrimination, people are now taking to social media to show off their test results and give detailed descriptions of their experiences while infected.
A Beijing resident in his 50s said: “I think everyone has got used to it. They have moved on... I don’t think people are that fragile.”
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
RSS